News: China! China! China!

I’d be cool with them doing it to Feinstein.

 

So we know China's GDP numbers are fake (as the Chinese vice-premier admitted). What are their actual numbers? A new study looking at how much light is generated at night tries to find a realistic answer:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/720458

So their numbers are probably closer to an average 4.9% GDP growth compared to a reported 6.1%. What does this mean? Quite a bit, actually. It means the Chinese economy is 60% smaller than the public numbers say (still the #2 economy, but only 1/3rd of the US). And it means their debt to GDP ratio is crazy high.

 

I don't think this was surprising at all.. China has been dumping huge amounts of money into infrastructure and vanity projects for decades and there's no way their economy should have been able to produce enough money to keep up with that spending..

 

Not to derail them Ukraine thread and, of course, feel free to not respond here as I'm moving threads, but...

This seems like a really bad idea to me. Having a blend of government controlled and free market is why China blew up over the last 30 years.. Going back to an economy that is far more on the government controlled would seem to be a big step back for a country that is already reeling from bad government decisions.

 

I certainly agree, but Xi isn't concerned with the well being of Chinese. He's only interested in his control. I think he sees there is no way to maintain that control in the current scheme if the trends are going as they are going, so he's switching towards crackdowns and direct authority. We'll have to see how well that works out. I don't think the result will be good for anyone in the world, no matter what direction it goes.

 

China’s draconian zero covid policy seems to be tearing the country apart at the seams. Last week there was major riots at Apple’s Foxconn factories after a worker tested positive and the workers, quite literally, stampeded towards the fences surrounding the factory to get out and then rioted when they were blocked.

1595480771984523264 is not a valid tweet id

This week, the riots have spread across the country with many protestors demanding the CCP and Xi step down..

This is an extraordinary, historic moment in China
Protests are breaking out across the country-from Beijing, to elite colleges, to other major cities, and even far flung places
Shocking to hear people chanting for Xi to step down
This is people past their breaking point @cnn pic.twitter.com/6lccNGIycT

— Selina Wang (@selinawangtv) November 27, 2022

Finally, China’s leadership is in a tight spot. The zero covid policy, poor quality of their locally developed vaccines, refusal to allow Western vaccines, poor hospital quality, and overall older age and poor health of their population means a lot of people will die if they loosen up their policy.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1596834202569175040.html

However, sticking with zero covid is causing undo pressure on the local population as they are constantly at risk of being locked in their homes for months at a time with little to no financial assistance from their government and having government workers tell them it is preferable for them to starve to death than allow them to leave their homes to get food.

 

Fascism only works for so long.

 

Not just covid barriers, but the doors of the building were locked from the outside and they wouldn’t ket them out of the building..

 

It's not wholly zero-COVID. Young people can't find homes or stable careers. Inflation -- while lower than elsewhere -- is eroding savings. It's all coming down on Xi at the same time.

...at least that's what the BBC is saying this morning.

 

This is entirely fair. From what I understand from watching youtube videos yesterday from people that cover China, it started as zero-covid protests, but as it spread across WeChat (chinese twitter), people latched on to it as a mechanism to voice their complaints about a lot of other things that have been churning under the lid.

 

Also, people paid inflated prices for condos that were never built, so they have to live in tents while paying a mortgage.

 

Chinese are protesting against a crap government for being crap.

 

My concern here is that even if they are somehow able to take down the CCP, we'll just have another Russia on our hands as the government that would take over from the CCP is going to be just as corrupt as the CCP is, if not worse. At this point, corruption is ingrained in every level of Chinese society and they are just as likely to elect a Putin style strongman as they are to elect someone that is actually going to fight corruption in the country.

 

Since AB brought it up in the Covid thread….

China is f**ked. Not just a little bit.. it is f**ked all the way.

It’s already been mentioned in this thread that China admitted to overcounting their population by about 100m mostly young, mostly females. As AB linked, China is admitting for the first time that their population dropped. We already know they lie, but we can safely assume that China overcounted by more than 100m and the reality is that China has been dropping in population for at least a decade. This means China’s population isn’t on the verge of dropping.. it’s Wile E Coyote after he ran off the ledge and just hasn’t noticed yet. It’s about to drop off a cliff and its going to destroy China.

I’m not sure what to make of Peter Zeihan yet, but he has an interesting perspective on demographics and the impact on the economy.

 

And unless we completely redo the global supply chains, Chinese workers are about to discover their bargaining position is prettay prettay good.

 

Eeeehhhhh. Only as long as it takes companies to pull their factories. China is headed into a lot of social turmoil and that is already making companies eye other countries to move their plants tnce they find that country and drop the change, China is going to lose a lot of factories.

 

Have to wonder if a conflict with China over say Taiwan comes sooner than later. They have naval superiority now and maybe their shrinking demographics creates urgency
on their part.


“As China continues to grow what is already the world's largest navy, a professor at the US Naval War College has a warning for American military planners: In naval warfare, the bigger fleet almost always wins.
Writing in the January issue of the US Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine, Sam Tangredi says if history is any lesson, China's numerical advantage is likely to lead to defeat for the US Navy in any war with China.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/asia/china-navy-fleet-size-history-victory-intl-hnk-ml/index.html

 

This is a far too simplistic take. China has a lot of ships, but they are, primarily, small ships of lower quality. This is particularly true if the battle extends outside the South China Sea. None of China's ships can extend beyond the South China Sea in combat situations, which means the US will be able to blockade China and considering China ships in virtually everything it needs, they are hosed.